Last week, NASA officially selected the winners of its Public-Private Partnerships to Advance Tipping Point Technologies, and Nokia Bell Labs has been awarded a contract to the tune of $14.1 million for the construction of 4G cell towers on the moon. Congratulations to Nokia are in order, but there is a long road ahead.
Experienced players of space flight simulators know very well that sending anything to space is an awesome feat of engineering, but actually building something on another world without the benefit of being there is just short of astounding. When NASA set its sights on making lunar exploration more sustainable for the Artemis program, with a target for putting new footprints in the regolith by 2024, it was obvious that it would need to pick its partners carefully. Nokia was among the winners, receiving a particularly exciting challenge.
Over the next two years, Nokia will be attempting to deploy the first 4G/LTE towers on the moon, which will serve as a hub for NASA’s control of lunar rovers and the foundation for true interplanetary communications. The towers will be specifically designed to be easy to upgrade to 5G technology when the time comes, so future astronauts may be able to stream games once the upgrade is made. In order to achieve this challenging feat, engineers at Nokia Bell Labs will have many factors to take into consideration.
The challenges Nokia faces in the coming months will test the limits of its ingenuity. First of all, the final product should be durable enough to endure the ubiquitous lunar regolith, which is a lot more abrasive than sand on Earth. The individual rock particles do not have the benefit of ocean water to wear away sharp corners, and the dust can easily work its way into cracks, especially if the dust becomes ionized and starts clinging to surfaces. That is why Neil Armstrong’s suit was built with 21 layers of fabric, metal, rubber, and fiberglass to prevent punctures from micrometeorites (space rock less than 1mm in size), which can reach incredible speeds before impacting an obstacle, such as a cell tower on the lunar surface.
Second, Nokia has to take weight into consideration. The heavier a payload is, the more rocket power it takes to break Earth’s gravity, and therefore the more expensive a mission will be. The team will have to either use materials that are particularly light for their strength, such as titanium and carbon fiber, over materials which are strong yet heavy, such as stainless steel, and/or they will need to design the tower’s components to have open spaces which will (hopefully) not compromise structural integrity.
Whatever engineering solution Nokia comes up with to protect delicate internal components may contribute to more terrestrial affairs in the future, such as creating phones which are built to endure in harsh, dusty environments. Still, it may be a while before it is possible to play Pokemon GO on the moon.
Source: NASA
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